THE WIVES OF NERO
Nero was no longer “the young Apollo” of his boyhood. Unbridled
dissipation and precocious crime had made their impress on body no
less than on mind. He was a little above the average height, but his
prematurely swollen paunch was poorly balanced on his slender and
ungraceful limbs, and his skin was blotched and repellent. The dull
grey eyes betrayed his unceasing indulgence, and the yellow hair,
dressed in stages of short curls, framed a face that was certainly no
longer handsome. His mind was in unmistakable disorder. Our kindly age
would invoke this mental trouble in extenuation of the brutal crimes he
had committed and the stupendous folly he is about to perpetrate. Were
this a biography of the Emperors, we might boldly essay to prove rather
that the insanity followed the matricide, but that does not concern us.
He was, as yet, only in his twenty-second year.
To this precocious monstrosity of vice and crime was mated one of the
gentlest young matrons of the Cæsarean house, Octavia, the daughter
of Claudius and Messalina. Married at the very early age of thirteen
to Nero, her timid girlish nature was paralyzed by the coarse habits
of her husband, and she merely hovers about the stage, like a dimly
perceptible shadow, during the earlier part of Nero’s reign. It must
have been shortly after their marriage that Nero disdained her for
the beautiful Greek slave, Acte, to whom he was more constant than
to any other living thing, and who, in return, paid the last tribute
to his despised remains. At first one of Nero’s associates screened
the entanglement, but, as we saw, it became known in the palace, and
Agrippina made a fruitless effort to press the rights of his girl-wife.
The injustice was, however, one that Roman ladies were not unaccustomed
to bear. Nero soon fell into more disreputable ways. Octavia would see
him leave the palace after supper with his wild companions, and needed
little effort of imagination to follow his course when he returned,
in the early morning, with torn garments and flushed, if not bruised,
features and, occasionally, the painted signs that he had wrenched from
shop-doors, or the cups he had stolen in a raid upon some low tavern.
He had gathered about him a band of older youths, who encouraged him
in the licentious use of his power, and endeared themselves to him by
the fertility of their imaginations. Chief among them was Salvius Otho,
a young noble of Etruscan descent, five years older than Nero--the
Emperor Otho of a later date. He had entered the palace in virtue
of an amorous relation with one of Agrippina’s ladies, and his wide
knowledge of adolescent amusements won him the regard of Nero, whom he
led into the wildest adventures. They would wander at night through the
streets, and revel in the taverns and brothels of the popular quarters
of the city, the mysterious dim-lit valleys on which patrician maidens
looked down from the mansions on the hills. In those centres of nightly
disorder Nero and his companions were the most daring Mohocks, if we
may use a phrase that belongs to later history. They violated women and
boys, and played the most brutal pranks upon unarmed folk. One night
Nero was severely thrashed by a Senator, whose wife he had insulted.
The man learned afterwards that it was the Emperor whom he had beaten,
and went to the palace to apologize. Nero forced him to atone with his
life for the injury he had done to the Imperial dignity. He withdrew
the guards from the Circus, in order that he might enjoy the fights of
the rival factions, and from the Milvian Bridge, at night, so as to
give complete liberty to vice in that nocturnal resort.
The chaste and trembling Octavia, who was still only in her sixteenth
year, shrank from his brutal disdain. It was enough for her to have the
title of Empress, he said to his mother, when she urged the rights of
Octavia. Presently Nero declared that he would divorce her, and marry
the handsome Greek girl, but Seneca and Burrus succeeded in preventing
him. To check his disorders entirely they were quite powerless, and
they seem to have thought it better to direct, than to resist, his
vices. Suddenly, however, in the year 58, Nero transferred his passion
to the daughter of Poppæa Sabina, and began the long, tragic struggle
to secure her as his Empress.
Poppæa, who will be the next figure in our gallery of Roman Empresses,
and therefore may at once be introduced, was one of the prettiest,
vainest, and most discussed ladies in Rome. Her mother, with whom
we are already acquainted as one of Messalina’s victims, had been
the daughter of a very wealthy and illustrious provincial governor,
Poppæus Sabinus. Poppæa’s father, Titus Ollius, had been a friend of
Sejanus, and had been swept away in the flood of Tiberius’s anger.
She was, therefore, of mature years, but she had protected her charms
so industriously that she still had the soft beauty and the fresh
complexion of a girl. She had inherited also the wealth, the wit,
and--it is said--the easy morals of her mother. The pretence of
modesty which she made, by wearing a veil whenever she went abroad,
was redeemed by the splendour of her establishment and the elaborate
culture of her fair skin and pretty face. The mules which drew the
litter of the veiled lady were shod with gold, and the traces of their
harness were woven from gold thread. When she moved to her country
house, or to Baiæ, five hundred she-asses ran in the train of her
litter and cars, to provide the milk for her daily bath. If we may
trust the busts to which her name is attached, she had a childish grace
and delicacy of feature, instead of the tense face of the adventuress;
and we know that her amber-coloured hair was so much admired that it
set, or revived, a fashion in amber.
She had married a knight, Rufus Crispinus, by whom she had had a son.
This marriage was ended by divorce, and she became the wife of Nero’s
favourite, Salvius Otho. It is suggested, and not difficult to believe,
that she had married Otho on account of his intimacy with the Emperor.
He was by no means handsome, though he covered his baldness with a
wig, dressed sumptuously, and had wealth, wit, and taste for art. From
him Nero heard, over their cups, the piquant story of Poppæa’s beauty
and luxury, and it was not long before Imperial messengers were sent
to her mansion. They were not admitted, and even Nero, when he sought
entrance, was coyly reminded that Poppæa was married, and was devoted
to her husband. After a stormy siege she gracefully capitulated so far
as to receive innocent visits from Nero, and inflame him to madness
with the display of her cultivated beauty. He spoke bitterly of his
mother as an obstacle in the way of their marriage. Poppæa twitted him
with his dependence on her, and we have seen the outcome.
When Agrippina had been removed, Nero proposed at once to divorce
Octavia and wed Poppæa. The silence of Seneca at all these critical
points in the degradation of Nero is painful to every admirer of the
distinguished moralist. It was the less courtly and less virtuous
Burrus who defended the young Empress. If Nero abandoned Octavia, he
brusquely said, he must also give up her dowry--the throne--and Burrus
was too generally respected to be flouted. Octavia therefore remained
in her lonely chamber at the palace, a helpless witness of the vices of
her husband.
For a month or two after the murder of Agrippina he behaved as one
stricken with a wild and haunting remorse. He went feverishly from
place to place, and gathered about him a band of magicians and
charlatans. He feared to go to Rome until he was assured that Rome
was rejoicing at his escape from his mother’s plot. Few pages in the
story of that degenerate city are sadder than that which records
the reception, in the month of May, of the Imperial matricide. The
Senators and their families, dressed in their gayest robes, hurried
out along the Appian Way to meet him, and his route was lined deep
with cheering crowds. He rewarded them royally. Five or six theatres
opened their doors, day after day, to the degraded citizens. New
things--things that had never before been seen in the whole history
of the city--were provided for their entertainment. Men and women of
the highest rank played the most lascivious parts of the mimes on the
public stage, and drove their chariots in the public circus. Nero was
a champion of the “green” faction, and pitted his royal skill daily in
the circus against the charioteers of the other factions. He sang in
the theatre, and organized a band of five thousand handsome youths,
in splendid costumes, to lead the applause, and shower upon him his
favourite epithet of “Apollo.” He even ventured to win praise in the
amphitheatre, but the one young lion which he vanquished had been
prudently gorged and stupefied before he encountered it. He announced
that his skill might be hired for private banquets, and nobles paid
him a million sesterces for his services. Apollo, he reflected, had
no beard in Greek statuary, so he shaved his beard, and the handful
of yellow hair was enclosed in a golden casket studded with pearls,
and carried in solemn procession to the Capitol. In the mighty
rejoicing over this complete assimilation to Apollo of the tun-bellied,
lanky-legged, half-crazy youth, it is recorded that a noble dame in her
eightieth year danced on the stage in the theatre. The descendants of
the greatest Roman families voluntarily entered the base ranks of the
comedian and the charioteer.
Mr. Henderson is reluctant to admit, in his study of Nero, that he was
insane. It would, no doubt, puzzle the most penetrating psychologist to
assign the respective portions of guilt and of irresponsible disorder
in his conduct; but that there was mental disorder it is at once more
natural and more charitable to assume. In any case, a year or so of
this delirious life wore out his robust frame, and a serious illness
suspended for a time the disgraceful performances. Unfortunately, when
he recovered, he lost the one man who had had some power to restrain
him, and sufficient honesty to use it. Burrus died in the year 62, and
at the same time the slender influence of Seneca was destroyed. This
is no place to discuss the difficult and delicate problem of Seneca’s
conduct in his association with Nero. Enough to say that he was now
accused of conspiracy, and, although he successfully defended himself,
he ceased to have any power at the palace.
It was now possible for Nero to rid himself of the pale young prude,
who shrank in her apartments, and there were men enough to devise
the procedure. Salvius Otho had already been sent to a remote part
of the Empire, and his place had been taken by a horse-dealer, named
Tigellinus, of little culture and even less character. With this new
favourite Poppæa entered into alliance, and the young Empress presently
found herself accused, with brutal levity, of adultery with Eucer,
an Alexandrian slave and musician, and of covering her shame by the
crime of abortion. Tigellinus easily obtained witnesses, but most of
Octavia’s servants refused, even under torture, to belie the virtue of
their gentle mistress. The coarseness of Tigellinus had carried him too
far, and public feeling was strongly aroused in her favour. Nero fell
back upon the ground of her childlessness, of which he could probably
have furnished a simple explanation, and divorced her. In deference to
the sentiment of Rome, he at first gave her the house of Burrus and
the fortune of a noble whom he had executed. A little later, however,
probably under pressure from Poppæa, he banished her to Campania. He
had married Poppæa a fortnight after the divorce of Octavia.
But the flagrant outrage quickened the better feeling that Rome had
not yet entirely lost, and Nero was forced to recall her. To the deep
mortification of Poppæa, the crowds invaded the outer court of the
palace, crying the name of Octavia. They removed the statues of the
new Empress from the temples and public places, and restored to their
positions, and crowned with flowers, the discarded statues of Octavia.
Poppæa angrily pressed Nero to assert his power, and the resourceful
Anicetus, the murderer of Agrippina, was summoned to Rome. Bolder
even than Tigellinus, he swore that he himself had had commerce with
Octavia, and, after a pretence of trial, she was banished to Sardinia.
Poppæa was not yet content, and Nero next announced that Octavia had
been detected in an attempt to corrupt the commander of the fleet. She
was taken to the rock-island of Pandateria that had already witnessed
tragedies.
The good feeling of Rome seems by this time to have been exhausted, and
Octavia was lazily surrendered to the brutal band who now surrounded
Nero. There is a peculiar melancholy in the closing of that frail and
innocent career. Rough soldiers seize the timid form, carry her to the
bath, bind her limbs, and open her veins. Timid and shrinking to the
end, the young girl--even now she is only in her twentieth year--starts
back with horror from the great darkness, and piteously implores them
to spare her life. She faints, and the flow of her blood is arrested.
The last pretence of pity is tossed aside, and she is stifled in the
vapour-bath.
Poppæa, Tacitus says, sent for her head. It is difficult to decide
whether the frequent repetition of this horrible detail in the
chronicles increases or lessens its credulity. But we can have no
hesitation in believing Tacitus when he says that the Senate ordered
services of thanksgiving in the temples for this fresh preservation of
the life of the Emperor.
Another Empress had stepped in blood to the throne, and was in turn
to stain it with her blood after a few years of imperial folly. We
have seen what type of woman it was whom Nero put in the place of
Octavia. Wealthy, coquettish, and beautiful, Poppæa saw in life only
a sunny path for the pursuit of butterflies. When she is represented
to us as licentious we must remember that no definite scandal attaches
to her name, and that she is actually described as “pious” by no
less an authority than the Jewish historian Josephus. In fact this
circumstance, and a peculiar feature of the disposal of her body, which
we will consider, gave birth to a speculation in early times that she
had become a Christian. Serviez finds the story of her conversion by
St. Paul, and subsequent “return to her abominations,” too piquant to
admit of doubt. But the conversion is even more disputable than the
abominations. It is now much disputed among our leading divines whether
St. Paul ever visited Rome, and there is a simpler explanation of the
phrase used by Josephus. The Roman governor of Judæa--the biblical
Felix, a brother of Agrippina’s favourite, Pallas--had dealt harshly
with the Jews, and sent some of their priests in chains to Rome.
Josephus and others went to intercede for them, and luckily met a
Jewish comedian who was in the favour of Poppæa and Nero. The historian
was received with distinction at the palace, and was so successful in
his suit that he might well ascribe piety to Poppæa. We may agree that
the incident probably argues some culture on her part. But we shall
discover her later in conduct that makes it undesirable to count her as
a disciple of St. Paul.
Before the end of the year Poppæa presented Nero with a daughter, and
a few weeks of wild rejoicing restored her to general favour, and
obliterated the memory of Octavia. The title of “Augusta” was, in an
excess of flattery, bestowed upon both the mother and the infant.
Senators raced each other to the Imperial villa at Antium, to express
their joy at this substantial promise of a continuance of the Cæsarean
house which had dragged them in the mire. The whole of Italy was lit up
with rejoicing. Poppæa felt that her position was at last secure. And
then, by one of those dread changes which were almost as common in the
life of Rome as in the tragedies of Greece, and made men assume that
there was a stern and mighty fate behind their puny and indulgent
gods, the storm broke over Italy once more. The child withered and
died, and Nero’s mind fell once more into dark disorder. He glanced
round with insane suspicion for possible aspirants to the throne, and
Poppæa’s remaining son was the first victim. One day he saw her boy
(by her former husband) playing at being emperor in his games with the
other children. In a few days Poppæa heard that the boy had lost his
life while fishing. Many another execution was ordered with the same
levity.
[Illustration: OCTAVIA
PORPHYRY BUST IN THE LOUVRE]
As before, these terrible deeds were mingled with the most splendid
and the most licentious entertainments. Noble dames of the highest
rank wrestled and fought in the amphitheatre before the frivolous
crowds; the city abounded in schools where the nobility learned to
ape the Emperor’s folly, and contribute to the gaiety of Rome with
the flute, the zither, or the dance. Nero conceived a new idea, and
pursued it with zeal. He would contest the crown with the artists of
Greece. Poppæa saw him training in the palace, lying for hours with
heavy plates of lead on his chest, restricting himself to a diet of
leeks and oil. She saw him exhibit his skill in the theatre, lifting
up his blotched and swollen body, in extraordinary contortions, on his
thin legs, as he strained after the high notes. Woe to the man who
openly laughed, or who excelled him! One of his masters was put to
death because Nero perceived that he could not equal the man. At last
his training was complete, and Rome sighed with relief as the thousand
carts, drawn by silver-shod mules, and the five thousand youths of
the Augustan band, set out for the coast. They gratified Naples with
a show as they passed through. For several days Nero kept the amazed
citizens in the theatre, and took his meals in the orchestra, so as to
lose no time. Then came the inevitable epilepsy; and it was announced
that Nero, perceiving the grief of his subjects at the prospect of his
departure, had postponed the Grecian tour.
On his return to comparative health, and to Rome, he once more
kept the citizens agog with alternate bursts of frantic dissipation
and sanguinary melancholy. From the death of her child until her
own violent end, two years later, Poppæa appears very little in the
chronicles; but, as we shall see that, willing or unwilling, she
supported her husband in his bloody crimes, we may assume that she
joined him in his less criminal orgies. One instance will suffice. He
ordered that a banquet should be given on a raft, on the large sheet
of water known as Lake Agrippa. When the citizens crowded to the shore
on the appointed evening, they found the great raft towed by vessels
plated with ivory and gold, manned by youths who had won distinction
in infamy. Round the shore taverns, brothels, and dining-rooms had
been erected. And when the night fell, and the beautiful scene was
lit by the light of innumerable torches, the public found that women
of the highest rank were no less accessible to them than prostitutes
in the houses by the lake, and the slave was at liberty to embrace
his mistress under the eye of her husband. Nero even outdistanced
Caligula in the Imperial teaching of vice. In the garb of a bride, he
went through the religious ceremony of marriage with a man of base
character, named Pythagoras. He had nude children fastened to stakes,
and rushed upon them fittingly clad in the skin of a wild beast.
And round the frontiers of that vast Empire, which the strength and
sobriety of his ancestors had created, the weary soldiers watched the
barbarians who prepared to invade it.
It was about this time that the great fire occurred which turned the
laughter of Nero’s subjects into resentment. For six days and seven
nights the flames ate their way through the blocks of tall tenements,
divided only by narrow streets, in the parching heat of July. Nero was
in the provinces at the time, and from the conflicting accounts it is
impossible to pass an opinion on the rumour that he had ordered the
burning of Rome. Dio gives us the familiar picture of Nero twanging
his zither, and chanting the “Fall of Troy” from the summit of a high
tower on the hill. Others declare, however, that he at once ordered
the most expedient methods for checking the conflagration. But it was
angrily whispered among the camps of the homeless that men had been
seen throwing torches upon their houses, and that they were acting
under orders from the palace. Nor were the citizens appeased when he
threw the blame on the obscure and unpopular devotees who went by the
name of Christians, and afforded them the brutal spectacle of driving
round the circus to the light of burning men and women, whose living
bodies had been wrapped in tow and soaked in wax and tar. Few believed
in their guilt. Even Seneca at length broke his casuistic or diplomatic
reserve, and retired in disgust from Rome. Nero went down in great
dejection to Baiæ, leaving orders that, in the restoration of the city,
a new palace should be built for him that should transcend anything
within the memory of Rome or of history.
This “golden house,” which Nero raised round the more modest palaces of
his predecessors, gave a fresh grievance to discontent. The great and
unselfish Octavian had been satisfied with a small patrician mansion;
Tiberius had built a palace; Caligula had enlarged it; Nero flung out
its wings over a vast space. It seemed that Emperors squandered the
money of the State in proportion to their uselessness. The colossal
edifice and its wonderful park stretched from the Palatine to the
Esquiline, across the intervening valley, and was surrounded by a
triple colonnade in marble. Citizens huddled in the crowded blocks
of the Subura and the Velabrum, while Nero created a miniature world
within his marble girdle. There was a great lake, filled with salt
water from Ostia, with a small town on its shore; there were vineyards,
cornfields, groves in which wild beasts ran loose, fountains, and
gardens. The palace itself was of such proportions that a statue of
Nero one hundred and twenty feet high could be conveniently lodged in
its porch. Some of the rooms were plated with gold and adorned with
precious stones. The supper-room had a ceiling of ivory, with openings
through which flowers and costly perfumes might be shed upon the
guests. The Egyptian roses whose beauty withered in one banquet in this
chamber had a value of £35,000 in our coinage.
There now dawned on Rome some consciousness of the price that the
Empire was paying for the stupendous folly it had so long applauded.
While the treasury was being exhausted in entertainments that all could
enjoy, the murmuring was confined to the sober few. From the moment
when this colossal symbol of Nero’s selfishness towered above the city,
the murmurs became audible and were multiplied. Nero, alarmed at the
sullen looks and the vague reports of plots, went down angrily to the
coast. Then a slave brought a definite accusation of conspiracy against
his master, and the stream of blood began to flow.
It is an unhappy fact, and one that confirms the darker view of
Poppæa’s character, that almost the only detail related of her in the
chronicles, after the death of her child, is that she was one of the
council of three who directed this horrible series of executions. Nero
would not trust the ordinary procedure of Roman justice. With Poppæa
and Tigellinus as associate-judges, he himself examined, or endorsed,
every charge that cupidity or malignity brought to the palace. Rome was
reddened for weeks with torture, murder, and suicide. Students of the
decay of Rome have, perhaps, not sufficiently appreciated the effect of
this periodic effusion of the best blood in the city. In the earlier
wars, both civil and foreign, the good and the base alike had fallen.
In these inquisitions for conspiracy, which fill Rome with mourning
time after time from the death of Octavian to the accession of Trajan,
it is chiefly the men and women of honour who suffer. They constitute a
natural selection of the cowardly and the sycophantic.
The city “teemed with funerals,” in the terse phrase of Tacitus, and
the gatherings of its citizens were black with mourning. Large numbers
of officers and patricians were executed or driven to suicide, and
their children were scourged or banished to the provinces. Seneca paid
the penalty of his tardy outspokenness, and his admirable end sustains
our trust that his character may, in spite of our unconquerable
hesitations, have been not inconsistent with his high creed. He and his
wife, who nobly asked permission to quit the world with him, had their
veins opened, and Seneca passed into the silence with quiet dignity;
his wife was, to her regret, recalled to life by the soldiers.
Poppæa did not live to share the punishment which these crimes brought
upon Nero. Her end came more swiftly and in more terrible form. The
carnage had been interrupted by a fresh outburst of rejoicing. A man
declared to Nero that he knew where the fabulous treasures of the
Carthaginian queen Dido, which Vergil had so recently sung in the
“Æneid,” were buried. A fleet was sent to Africa to recover them,
and from his sombre brooding Nero passed into a new fit of prodigal
entertaining. He emptied the last depths of his treasury in spectacles
and donations. When the fleet returned at length without a single cup
or coin, his anger stormed with ungovernable fury, and one day, when
Poppæa expostulated with him, he kicked her in the abdomen. The outrage
proved fatal, as she was pregnant, and Nero’s light mind turned from
rage to the most extravagant lamentation. Her body was not burned, as
was usual at Rome, but embalmed, and vast quantities of rare perfumes
were sacrificed on the funeral pile. This peculiarity of her funeral
has been thought to strengthen the interesting legend of her conversion
to Christianity. It was more probably due to Nero’s frenzied desire to
give a unique burial to so unique a goddess, as the Senate declared her
to be. It is unthinkable that Nero should make such a concession to
Christian ideas, even if she had shared them in any measure, and her
life does not dispose us to claim that honour for her. The legend has
no foundation in history, and the early Church may easily be relieved
of the stain of having counted Poppæa among its adherents.
It is not our place to pursue the insanity of the Emperor through
all the forms it assumed after the death of Poppæa, but he took a
third wife, whom Mr. Baring-Gould seems to have overlooked, and we
must briefly relate the story of her experience. Immediately after the
death of Poppæa Nero took a consort whom the pen almost shrinks from
describing. It seemed to him that he discovered a resemblance to his
beloved Poppæa in one of his freedmen, Sporus. The man was entrusted to
the surgeons for a loathsome operation, and then solemnly married to
the Emperor. Dressed in the Empress’s robes and jewels, he travelled in
Nero’s litter, and was publicly kissed and caressed by him.
This abominable comedy soon lost its interest, and Nero decided to
marry Octavia’s sister, Antonia. Recollecting the recent fate of her
sister, she boldly refused, and she was put to death on a charge
of aspiring to the throne. Nero then chose Statilia Messalina, the
granddaughter of a distinguished and wealthy Senator who had been
driven to take his own life under Agrippina. The last part of the
“Annals” of Tacitus, which would cover this date, is missing, and if we
are to believe the less reputable chroniclers, Messalina had already
been familiar with Nero, and had married, as her third husband, one of
his close companions in debauch, Atticus Vestinus. She is described as
beautiful, witty, wealthy, and lax; but the description is applied to
so large a proportion of the ladies of the time that it gives little
aid to the imagination. From some later details we shall conclude
that she had more culture, and probably more character, than most of
the courtly ladies of Nero’s time. One is disposed to think that she
married Nero on the maxim, literally interpreted, that it is better
to be married than burned. Her husband was one night entertaining his
friends when soldiers from the palace entered the room. They took him
to his bath, opened his veins, and let him bleed to death; and Statilia
Messalina became the tenth Empress of Rome.
[Illustration: POPPÆA
BUST IN THE CAPITOLINE MUSEUM, ROME]
There is every reason to believe that she shrank, with prudence,
from the executions and entertainments which again proceeded with
ghastly alternation. Her five predecessors had been murdered; the
preceding lady of Nero’s choice had been murdered; and she had herself
been divorced by murder. Messalina seems to have concentrated her
resources upon remaining alive, until a last and most just murder
should release her from her odious connexion. Men were wearying even
of Nero’s ridiculous performances, and were stung by his cruelty. He
put soldiers amongst his audience, to note the absent and detect the
scoffer, so that his festivals became an affliction. Men were driven
to the subterfuge of shamming death, and being borne out by their
slaves, to avoid the exacting part of admiring spectators. Nero swore
that he would exterminate the whole senatorial order; it is the most
honourable mention we find of them in the chronicles for many decades.
To their relief he now announced that he would proceed with his Greek
tour. The silver-shod mules and the gay regiment of the Augustans were
set in motion, Nero’s hair was permitted to attain an artistic length
and negligence, and the comedy was transferred for a time to the land
of Aristophanes. How he won every prize for which he competed, how he
plundered the temples and the mansions of the Greeks, how his retinue
passed like a flight of locusts over the helpless province, must be
read elsewhere. After some eighteen months he was recalled to Italy by
grave tidings.
It has been impossible to refrain from speaking in accents of disdain
of the way in which Rome had silently witnessed, or joyously acclaimed,
the successive follies of Nero, but, as I have previously noticed, it
was in a peculiarly difficult situation. The Prætorian Guards were
an army of twenty thousand disciplined soldiers, and were paid for
personal service to the ruling house, and blind to any other interest
than their own. They kept an irresistible check upon every impulse to
rebel. That there were such impulses, and probably some attempt to
seduce the Guards, the unfailing stream of blood at Rome justifies us
in believing. The hope of the Empire was in the more sober and more
industrious provinces, and it was here that the revolt began. The
leader of the troops in Gaul, Vindex, entered into correspondence with
the troops in Spain. The Spanish commander, Servius Sulpicius Galba,
was a Roman of illustrious family, venerable age, and stern character.
Nero had heard that the purple had been offered to Galba, and that the
legions of Gaul and Spain were preparing to advance on Italy.
On his return to Italy, however, Nero hears that the German legions are
advancing against those of Gaul, and that Galba is hesitating. He gaily
resumes his follies, and is deaf to political exhortations. At last a
manifesto is put into his hands, in which Vindex refers to him as a
“miserable player,” and the insult to his art cuts deeply. He writes
to the Senate to demand redress, and sets out for Rome. Nothing in the
whole of his extraordinary career is so tragi-comic as this penultimate
scene. Clothed in a mantle of purple embroidered with gold stars,
wearing the Olympian chaplet on his head, he enters Rome as the god
of art. Servants bear before him the 1,800 crowns or chaplets he has
won in Greece; the five thousand Augustans march behind his chariot.
A sacrifice is made to Apollo, and the games resume their familiar
course. Then Nero is told that, though Vindex has committed suicide,
the German and other legions have joined Galba, and the fire of revolt
is spreading round the Empire. He announces that he will advance on
Gaul. The ladies of his harem, who form a fair regiment, have their
hair cut short, and, with toy shields and other theatrical properties,
masquerade as Amazons.
The last scene is brief and inevitable. Galba is marching on Rome,
the Prætorian guards have been won for him, the nobles find it
safe to desert Nero. The nerveless brute whimpers and weeps in his
helplessness. He will fly to Alexandria, and earn his living as a
musician. The great “golden house” is silent and deserted. Rome is
openly deriding him. His servants have fled; one has even stolen the
box in which he kept poison for such an emergency. The faithful Acte,
Sporus, and a very few of those who fed on his folly, remain with him.
Messalina has deserted him, and will appear later as the friend of one
of his successors.
In the great silent house, with its walls of gold and its ceilings of
ivory, he puts off the purple robes and clothes himself in an old shirt
and a ragged cloak. On a miserable horse he rides with them across the
vast deserted park, and makes for the house of one of his dependents, a
few miles from Rome. There they admit him by a hole they have made in
the wall, give him black bread and water, and cover him with a blanket.
They discuss the situation, and conclude by offering him a dagger.
He shrinks, like Julia, like Messalina, from the horrible darkness,
and vainly strains his eyes for a ray of hope. At last they hear the
clatter of cavalry on the road, and Nero feebly points the dagger
at his breast, for a servant to drive home. And when the customary
cremation is over, there are none but Acte and a faithful old nurse to
lay the degraded ashes in the tomb.
So the tenth Empress of Rome laid down her brief dignity. Statilia
Messalina had had little reason to follow Nero in his humiliation.
Whether the charge of laxity that is brought against her be true or
no, she was a woman of exceptional intelligence and culture, and
had probably only married Nero out of fear. We meet her again, at a
later stage, in the chronicles. After Galba’s short hour of supremacy
we shall find an equally short reign of Salvius Otho, the man who
once pillaged taverns with Nero in the Subura. Provincial government
had sobered him, and he wrote affectionate letters to Messalina. He
would, no doubt, have made her Empress once more if he had lived, but
the throne was wrested from him, and Messalina retired to the calmer
world of letters and rhetoric. Our last glimpse of her discovers
her delivering orations of great eloquence and learning among the
intellectual ladies of Rome.